


Fallen King, Beneath Us

by Notorious_Naga



Series: The Fallen King AU [1]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Starting small, the lord of shades is referred to as 'it' mostly, we had an idea and we took it and ran!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-11-12 03:06:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18002618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notorious_Naga/pseuds/Notorious_Naga
Summary: Deep, within the pitch Abyss, the fallen King of Pale rests. Just how did it end this way? Better yet, what's to come?The king is sealed. The void yearns. The palace is gone, and the kingdom is renewed. In a tucked away grotto, an archivist organizes. What a story to tell...----The first act of a story, created with the efforts of a team of artists and writers.





	1. Stirring...

Darkness. Endless, all-consuming, blank and… horribly unchanging darkness. Whispers of taunts echo in the nothingness, but they are tuned out by the monotony of themselves. The abyss lulls him in this cage, not of his making but his cage all the same. He has run through this endless cycle a thousand times a thousand days— and then some. Nothing changes, this much is certain. It is as it should be, and he rests knowing that if he wakes it could be worse than this tormented slumber.  
A light. It falls through a crack unseen and lands without noise. But it is light, and that unsettles the void enough to wake him. He stirs, and all at once his attention is drawn to that minuscule little object, floating on the sea of Void he rests on, not yet consumed. It shines with a silent sort of determination like it meant to fall where it lay, and for an instant he almost recognizes it— how long had it been since he’d seen an idol of himself?  
And then, the mind that is not his own rears to the front and the idol is gone and the light is stolen back into the depths. Now, it is back to that all-consuming darkness, but yet. Something is amiss. He is awake now, he realizes. He is not in that half-tormented slumber of whispers and nothing more. The wyrm of soul and void is awake, and… nothing is wrong, yet. The rush to consume fades with the light taken in, and now it is calm despite its endless whispering taunts.  
The entrance.  
Far above, marked by a darkened twist of an iron platform, a crack shows in a sealed door. It does not shed light, no, but makes a noise that leads him to move up, up, on broken stone and spikes that do not phase him. In a rush of Void, his bleary eyes behold the first glance of outside for the first time in… an age.  
Just who cracked open that sealed door? Who dropped that bright idol? Who knows of him…?


	2. Waiting...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The King sees a chance... and doubts it.

The entrance is cracked open. 

A glimpse of the outside, small as it is, is enough. After countless days in this sleep, he is awake, aware, and he sees something other than the drowning black that holds him outside this cracked entrance. How the seal has broken, after all these years, is a mystery that does not occur to him. He watches the entrance, for a time, waiting. For what, he does not know, but some part of him thinks that someone, not something, must be the reason. 

That reason does not come. Instead, curiosity surfaces as he does, out of the void, and brings him forward. The crack is barely large enough for anything of size— let alone himself— to fit. However, he is as versatile as the beast that consumed him all those years ago. He does not immediately want to go through; he barely was himself. He did not want to leave the abyss he had trapped himself in for the same reason he had put himself in it.

What if the void used this- used him- to get free? What if it took the chance to wreak the havoc he had so decidedly stopped? What if, what if, what if— 

The endless possibilities torment him worse than the endless spout of reminded sins ever did. 

Though the taunts were often negligible with their frequency, he was not immune to his own doubts. Seeing weakness, the void surges around him once more, and though he may have been curious about the opened door, doubt overcame him. Slowly, with the roar of his past around him, he is pulled gradually back into the depths, his attempt abandoned. 

But yet, he did not fall back into the slumber. No, he lay awake in the sea he could not leave. Could he ever leave this abyss? And, if he did, could he ever say he would be recognized? What if he was shunned, cast away for his unpredicted abandonment? Could he say he would be accepted? Much time had passed since he had sealed. Who remained? Questions and doubts consumed him, now, and he soon nearly forgot about that opened entrance. For now, he did not want to leave, as much as he despised these depths. For now, he pondered the world beyond this miserable cage he had locked himself in. 

What lied beyond this place, now? What opened this door? And most importantly…  
What remained of his dear Hallownest?

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!! This is the first act of many for a wonderful little AU called the Fallen King/Voidwyrm AU! Further material (and a drawn version of this chapter!) can be read on https://fallenkingau.tumblr.com  
> The uploading schedule is not set yet! Updates will come as they are ready until further notice! Please feel free to give feedback and if you've spotted any errors please let us know! We strive for an enjoyable reading experience.
> 
> (3/5/19) Edit: Minor fixes with spacing, as I was informed it was a little difficult to read with old spacing. Will be upkept in future updates.


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